silent treatment
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.34 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A form of communication refusal where one person deliberately ignores or withholds interaction from another, often in order to express anger, disapproval, or to exert control.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "to give someone the silent treatment"
- "Finally we gave him the silent treatment, and for weeks before he died we neither spoke to him nor did he speak to us."
- "We met one woman who had been given the silent treatment by her husband for 40 years. If the silent treatment becomes a longstanding pattern, you lose self-esteem and perspective."
- "So sailors used a tried technique to deal with an offender: the silent treatment. They would ignore him completely for weeks on end. That might sound like an innocuous action to you, but in truth, it was far from it. The silent treatment was, according to the writer Otis Ferguson in 1944, “a process so effective in the monotony of ship’s life as to make strong men weep.”"